4K and keyboard support are nice touches—deluxe pre-order paywall notwithstanding.

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Nearly eight years ago, Halo Warslanded on Xbox 360 consoles with designs on making an RTS game that truly works with gamepad control. To celebrate the series' impending sequel, currently scheduled to launch in February, Microsoft has come up with an odd promotional move. Finally, you can play Halo's console-minded RTS from 2009... with a mouse and keyboard.

Halo Wars: Definitive Edition landed on Xbox One and Windows 10 on Tuesday, and I dove in to offer some quick impressions of what to expect from a PC-ized version of a console-ized version of a PC gaming genre.

How do you get it?

Not the same as Steam's "early access," mind you.

For the time being, Microsoft has locked both versions of Halo Wars: Definitive Edition behind a paywall of sorts. You cannot play this version without going through the Microsoft Store, either on Windows 10 or Xbox One, and placing a pre-order for Halo Wars 2's Ultimate Edition.

Of course, a "digital pre-order" is a curious thing: it's just pre-approving your willingness to pay the $79.99 price tag without actually charging you for the thing. You can totally cancel that pre-order before getting charged by the time HW2 unlocks on February 16, soooo... you can technically swing a free, limited-time taste of Halo Wars: DE. The catch is, once you place that pre-order, you have to wait until Microsoft deems you worthy of a HWDE unlock code. Anybody who pre-ordered by December 14 should expect their code by the end of today. Newly arriving freeloaders, on the other hand, could be waiting days for their voucher. I assume that voucher would be terminated the instant you cancel a HW2 pre-order, but that's yet to be determined.

This is nowhere near as slick as Microsoft saying, "Sure, you can pay for this older game by itself." I hope that changes soon, because I still have the foul taste of Modern Warfare's locked-up remaster in my mouth, but Microsoft has yet to announce such an offer. For now, those are the hoops. Jump through them, flip them the bird; it's up to you.

Returning to clicks-per-second

Wars! Halo Wars!

Time to build another base.

Let's roll.

Gonna need these.

As with other Xbox Play Anywhere games, a digital unlock for HWDE works for both Windows 10 PCs and Xbox One consoles. I dove straight into the PC version because, barring a major muck-up on 343 Industries' part, I understand that the console version is a 60-frames-per-second remake that controls pretty much the same as the original.

For the most part, Halo Wars on PC feels good to play. The console version never used its easily accessible joysticks or triggers to create RTS control systems that exceeded those on PC. You're not losing any interesting shortcuts or tweaks by clutching onto your PC control mainstays. The default mapping of WASD keys for map control, Q and E for local and global unit selection (respectively), and R and F for special attacks is solid for basic war-commanding when paired with a mouse. The mouse wheel lets you pick through individual unit types in your larger troop selection, which works well, and your Z, X, and C keys let you auto-warp on the map to spots of interest (your "commander" character, your primary base, etc.).

And like most RTS games, the control and alt keys can be combined with number keys to generate and swap between custom troop clusters. The Xbox 360 original has never come close to replicating this perk.

The PC version's major control issue comes from certain special attacks, such as the Covenant's aimable "cleansing" laser, which were clearly designed with joystick motions and directional pushes in mind. Some weapons, like droppable UNSC bombs, are incredibly fiddly to aim, with neither WASD nor mouse aiming feeling easily trackable. That's the trade, then—a few moments of fiddly aiming for much more granular troop selection. I, for one, will gladly take it, though I would like to see 343 fine-tune those joystick-derived aiming bits.

No custom resolution support? For shame, Microsoft.

Custom squad assignment buttons! Yessss.

Happy to see so many custom-bindable key options, though.

A free player's guide? Aw, Microsoft, you shouldn't have.

While I am happy to see full 4K resolution support and silky smooth 4K performance on my testing rig (i7-4770K, 980Ti), I have to report that Microsoft dropped the ball on custom resolutions with HWDE. Looks like your only options are 1080p and 2160p, which can be toggled with a "high resolution" checkbox. Sorry, widescreen-monitor lovers and other resolution users. The options menus don't include many other performance toggles, beyond enabling or disabling v-sync and getting a few basic sliders for shadow, particle, and anti-aliasing quality.

This Definitive Edition has tweaked enough geometry and textures for the sake of 4K resolution that you can see a difference if the games are side by side. Otherwise, you're not going to notice an enormous visual boost here; the lighting and particle effects look, well, like the ones from an old Xbox 360 game. That's good enough. Halo Wars always stood out thanks to clean, simple designs and easily readable maps. In that respect, the game's look has aged well.

HWDE's pre-rendered sequences have been ported over untouched from the 360 version, and those have also aged well, all things considered. However, each mission opens with a pre-rendered gameplay sequence in which the camera swoops through a battlefield. These look grainy and ugly compared to the real-time 4K gameplay now on offer.

Further Reading

As of press time, multiplayer modes are currently offline for HWDE, assumedly because unlock codes are still rolling out in waves. Anybody hoping for local split-screen multiplayer on the PC version will come away disappointed, however, as the game's competitive and co-op modes are relegated to online play only.

I always liked Halo Wars' breezier take on RTS gameplay. I always thought that was more thanks to its campaign design and base management tweaks than it was due to shoving RTS controls onto an Xbox 360 gamepad. As a result, I imagine I'll play through Halo Wars again this way. It works on mouse-and-keyboard, finally, and it feels smooth as a result.